


Commencement

by spookyknight



Series: I Bring Life Project [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 07:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyknight/pseuds/spookyknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate resolution to Journey’s End with a little help from Donna and Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commencement

**Author's Note:**

> Submission to the I Bring Life Project, prompt: female solidarity.

To say the atmosphere on the TARDIS was celebratory would be a gross understatement. Together, this unlikely group had beaten insurmountable odds to save not only the Earth, but the entire universe. 

“You better talk to her before it’s too late,” Donna whispered conspiratorially into the prime Doctor’s ear amid the chaos, nodding pointedly towards Rose.

After the joyful cheers and hugs slowed down, the festivities dissolved into urgent cell phone calls and pressing questions. The most pressing ones of course were about the metacrisis and what it meant it now that there were two Doctors.

Seeing his alter ego assaulted by these questions, the Time Lord Doctor saw his opportunity. There was so much to do and such a small window of time in which he had to work. His companions needed to be returned to their respective homes very soon. But he could take this moment, as Donna said, he had to. The Doctor owed it to her after being torn apart without choice in the lever room at Canary Wharf, oh so long ago now. So he found his way to Rose’s side and grabbed her hand when no one was looking, quietly leading down the corridor toward the interior of the TARDIS.

He didn’t stop until they were in the library, a room he considered neutral ground and as good a place as any for a difficult conversation.

At first, Rose was intrigued by the possibility of sneaking away from the group, but when she saw the Doctor’s grave expression, her heart sank. He seemed reluctant to start whatever he had to say, choosing instead to just stare at her sadly. She swallowed, dropping her eyes to the ground and fiddling with the hem of her shirt. 

“Right,” she exhaled roughly. “This is where you tell me I crossed universes for nothing.”

“No,” he jumped in quickly. He grasped her arms just above the elbow and squeezed lightly, urging her to look at him. “No, no, no. You were brilliant, Rose. Don’t ever say anything you’ve done has been for nothing.”

“But you’re sending me away again,” she concluded, unable to meet his eyes.

The Doctor sighed heavily. “You’ve got to go back.”

“I knew it!”

Rose shook her head, pulling away from him. She turned her head and dabbed lightly at the corners of her eyes where tears were gathering despite her efforts to keep calm.

“You won’t be going alone,” he assured her evenly.

She scoffed. “You’re sending  _him_  with me?”

“ _He_  is me. Me when we first met. You made me better.”

“So is that what I was to you? Some sort of project to fix you?”

“No. How could you think that?”

“Tell me what I should think, then. I just crossed hundreds of parallel worlds to find my way back to you and you’re just sending me away. Pawning me off on another version of you because you can’t be bothered to take care of him yourself.”

“Rose, that’s not…”

“Trust you to cock it up, Martian boy,” called a familiar voice from the doorway. “You really are rubbish at this.”

They both turned to see Donna watching them, hands on her hips and looking very cross.

“Donna, you  _know_  I’m not from Mars,” the Doctor felt the need to point out.

“And she’s not from Venus,” Donna quipped, nodding her head toward Rose. “But you’re still being a useless git.” She softened her expression and her voice, looking from Rose to the Doctor and back again. ”You see, it’s better than that. Tell her what you’re trying to give her.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned in frustration. “Donna…”

“Tell her,” Donna barked with authority. Then flashed a sweet smile at Rose which made the other woman smirk despite herself.

The Doctor took a deep breath and turned back to Rose. “When Donna touched the jar with my hand, she activated the latent regeneration energy and created a human-Time Lord biological metacrisis. He - the other Doctor - he’s me in every way that matters, Rose. Same thoughts, same memories. But he’s part human. Only one heart. He’ll never regenerate.”

“One heart and only one life,” Donna chimed in, looking at Rose. “Just like you.”

“One life,” Rose mumbled bitterly. “What makes you think he wants to spend it stuck in a parallel world?”

“A life with Rose Tyler.” The Doctor replied with a small smile. “How could he say no?”

“But you don’t have to take it from dumbo here,” Donna interjected, earning a glare from the Time Lord. “You can ask  _him_  for yourself.”

“Won’t it hurt him, being away from the TARDIS?” Rose wondered aloud.

“You let me worry about that,” the Doctor answered quietly.

“So this is what you want?” Rose asked the Doctor. “To send me back and go on alone?”

“I want for you to be happy,” he told her honestly. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“I’ll look after him,” Donna promised solemnly. “It won’t be the same but he won’t be alone, Rose. We’ll take a piece of him, each of us. I think he’s trying to do the right thing, your Doctor. He just has no bloody clue how to tell you.”

Rose nodded, more to herself than anything. But the tears that were threatening were soaking her lashes now and threatening to spill over her cheeks. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“I know.” The Doctor reached out and gathered her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said, burying his face into her hair. “But I’ll be right there with you, I promise. All of me, Rose. I’ll never leave you.”

“Go on, then. Kiss the girl.”

Rose and the Doctor turned toward the doorway again to see Donna standing there same as ever, hands on her hips and looking at them expectantly.

“Oh, come on. After everything she’s done, she deserves a proper goodbye. You’ve got one shot at a good snog before it’s too late. Go on.”

He cleared his throat purposefully. “I hadn’t exactly planned to do this in front of an audience.”

Donna rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Watching you two for the past two hours of relative time has been torture. I can’t imagine the two years you both spent dancing around this whole bit.”

“Doctor, you don’t have to,” Rose said in a small voice. “If you don’t want.”

He looked down at her, then. His beautiful Rose, with reddened cheeks and watery eyes downcast almost sheepishly. The Doctor raised her chin with a gentle press of his fingers and bent his head down close to her.

“Oh, Rose,” he breathed roughly. “I want.”

Gingerly, he touched his lips to hers. The soft pressure was testing; a silent request for acceptance which she gladly gave, popping up on her toes to slant her mouth more firmly against his.

For a moment, the kiss was the only contact between them. Then, all at once, they seemed to remember they had arms. The Doctor splayed his hands out against her back, gently but firmly pulling her closer. Rose snuck her hands up to his head, threading her fingers deliciously through his hair.

Mindful of their audience, the Doctor drew out every pleasure of her mouth against his without delving deeper. But at the first hesitant touch of her tongue against his bottom lip, all thought of propriety dissolved with the pleasure of it. Hunger and passion built up from years of longing was unleashed as the kiss blossomed into an intricate dance of lips, tongue, and teeth. He could feel her, warm and solid in her arms, smell the subtle scent of her shampoo mixed with  _Rose_  and finally, finally he was  _tasting_  her, the essence of Rose Tyler on his tongue. 

Distantly, Rose heard Donna mutter “at least I won’t have to remember this” before exiting the room, leaving the couple alone to their snogging. 

The comment worried Rose but then the Doctor groaned almost imperceptibly and she was distracted by the enticing sound. She ran her nails down his chest and grabbed his hips, pulling him even closer against her. With another appreciative sound, louder this time, he reached a hand under her shirt and she felt the cool skin of his fingers against her lower back. He trailed kisses down from her mouth along her jaw and down her neck. Able to catch her breath for a moment, Donna’s words suddenly pushed through her clouded mind. The Doctor was just about to nip at her collarbone when she pushed him back. 

"Hold on. What did Donna mean just now?” Rose asked breathlessly.

The Doctor blinked, trying to clear the pleasant haze their kisses had put him in. “What?”

Rose smiled, rather pleased with herself. “Donna,” she clarified. “She said something about not being able to remember?”

“Ah,” he realized. 

His face grew serious. He carefully extricated himself from her embrace and stepped back. He was quiet for a moment, never a good sign for him. 

“Doctor?”

He reached back to ruffle the already mussed hair at the back of his neck, playing with the idea of fibbing to her. But this was  _Rose_ , and not only that, she was now an even more amazing and capable Rose who had grown into herself and crossed dimensions to come back to him. She’d see right through him if he tried to sugar-coat Donna’s situation.

“There’s a Time Lord consciousness trying to fit into Donna’s human mind right now,” he explained. “She won’t be able to maintain it, and I think she knows that. In fact, I  _know_  she knows that because right now, there’s one part of her that’s,  _well_ , me.”

“So…” she prompted quietly. 

“So,” he parroted, drawing out the word purposefully. “I’m going to have to remove it. Along with her memories. Everything from the moment I met her.”

“But you can’t,” Rose exclaimed suddenly. “That would just kill her, to not remember all the amazing things she’s seen - everything she’s done…”

Rose tried to put herself into Donna’s shoes, imagining losing everything that had happened to her since the Doctor grabbed her hand in that basement. The Doctor was such an integral part of the woman Rose had become, she would lose everything she’d suffered and learned and grown in her travels with him.

“I have to,” he replied sadly. “She’s going to burn. She would die, and I can’t let that happen.”

“We won’t,” she assured him. Then she remembered Donna’s words from earlier. “But… Donna, she promised me she would be with you. And if you think I’ll let you drop me off back in that other universe when you’d end up alone, think again. We have to find another way.”

“There isn’t,” he said weakly. “If there were, I would. You know I would.”

“Doctor,” Rose started, mustering patience. “You have at least three geniuses, an immortal ex-Time Agent, an amazing proper human doctor, and a bloody brilliant time-traveling journalist aboard the TARDIS right now. I think we can figure out a little thing like Donna’s head.”

He scoffed. “Rose, a Time Lord mind is no ‘little thing’”

“Still so easily insulted, I see.” Rose chuckled, rolling her eyes. “Must be pretty big to have room for all that ego.”

“I’m being serious,” he protested. “The walls of the universe are closing. We don’t have time…”

She narrowed her eyes at him, then, poking him in the chest. “Don’t have _time_? This is Donna we’re talking about. You’re gonna  _make_  time.”

“It’s not that simple…”

“Built a trans-dimensional space and time machine from scratch in another universe, Doctor. I can tell you all about ‘not simple.’ You want me to stick to your plan, swan off to the other universe with another version of you? You’d better believe we’re sorting Donna first.”

The Doctor nervously scratched the back of his head again. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“You’re damn right,” she said, taking his hand. “Come on, then, walls of the universe closing and all. March.”


End file.
